GCT 6.2 Migrating Guide for GridFTP

If you are running a version 2.2 or earlier, it is deprecated, unsupported, has major bugs leading to stability problems, has known potential security exploits via the wuftpd server, and has a protocol incompatibility with later versions due to an error in the security code. Your GT 2.2 clients will not work with newer servers (GT 2.4.0 and greater) and new clients will not work with GT 2.2 servers. You should immediately upgrade to GCT 6.2.

If you are running GT 2.4.0 or greater, the migration for GridFTP is relatively painless. There were only new features added. No changes were made to the existing protocol or APIs, so any existing client or application built using our client APIs will work unchanged. You may install new clients and servers on an as-opportunity-permits basis and will have no problems. Any combination of old/new client/server will work.

To upgrade your server, either install it in a $GLOBUS_LOCATION different than the GT 2 installation (either as part of an entire GT 4 installation or by just doing make gridftp). Alternately, you can statically link the new server to avoid versioning issues and replace the existing executable. The configuration files are very different, so you will need to update the configuration.

To upgrade your client, simply build the client and use the new client as you would the old one.

Below is a list of new functionality available in GT 3.2 and higher (note that the MLST/MLSD feature is used by RFT in GT 3.2 and higher and is required if you want to be able to specify a directory to move):

New Functionality in 3.2: